


Held Her

by Katherine



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Canonical Character Death, Dragonfly in Amber, F/M, Were-Creatures, weredeer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: She lived, outside of my womb; I felt her breathe as I first held her, my newborn daughter.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Held Her

She lived, outside of my womb; I felt her breathe as I first held her, my newborn daughter. Jamie's blood was so strongly visible in her, slanted eyes and the first red wisps of hair. More visible yet when she changed, from a baby with balled fists to a fawn, her little hooves coated in softness for birth. She was lighter so, and then utterly still, damp fur cooling against my skin as I held on to her, gentle, wanting to clutch. Desperate to hold her with me and to life. But life had left her already.

I had forgotten Mother Hildegard's presence, and when I remembered I was too full of new grief and continued pain to be frightened of her response. But her face declared no acknowledgment of strangeness. Her old fingers traced the shape of the cross on my daughter's forehead, up between her folded ears. Then she helped me lap a blanket entirely around her, soft folds entirely hiding my child.

"I will see her buried," Mother Hildegarde told me, low. "And named, for she is a child of God."

I admitted that Jamie and I had not spoken yet of names. For some reason then I remembered seeing him stand with his sister Jenny in their four-legged shapes, the first time they had let me see them thus. The bright deer and the dark, the tall stag and the doe broad-bellied with her coming fawn. I had not then believed that I myself would ever carry a child. Yet so I had, and despite my all too human self had made one who carried the ability to shift. My first child, and Jamie's. Our baby, our fawn, too early born. Jamie would never see her, and I had held her once, and never could again.


End file.
